Clinical

Clinical Psychology Master's Program

Training Philosophy

This two-year full time Master’s program is designed to qualify students to provide mental health services in diverse settings, including but not limited to, community mental health centers, schools, hospitals, private practice, and managed care environments. Our clinical training philosophy emphasizes learning through doing. We believe theories of normal development and the development of psychopathology only come to life when clinicians work with real people with real problems. For this reason, our students begin practicing within the first few weeks in the program. We also emphasize close relationships between faculty mentors and clinical trainees, which is facilitated by limiting each incoming cohort to 8 students. We feel that the best way to develop as a competent mental health clinician is for clinical trainees to work closely with their faculty supervisors, so that they can both understand themselves and their clients. Although we do not require it, we also strongly recommend that beginning therapists seek out their own individual therapy.

This training philosophy means that we very much value life experiences (including diverse life experiences and backgrounds) and clinical practice experiences when we evaluate applicants to the program. Since incoming students begin their clinical practice just weeks into the program, our program requires that incoming students have solid clinical practice experiences (either through volunteer or paid positions) to gain admission into the program. In order to provide close relationships with our training students we are a relatively small program, accepting just 8-12 students per year. We accept students in the fall only, and each cohort of students works closely together over the two-year program. Because of our program size we do not offer part time admission into the program, nor are there subspecialties within our program. We train solid mental health clinicians who are prepared to work in the community once they graduate.

Prerequisites: We require the following upper-division coursework to be completed before admission into the program (preferably before applying to the program): Statistics, Theories of Personality, and Abnormal Psychology. Because our students begin clinical training within weeks of starting the program, we expect students to have at least a year of clinical practice experience before applying to the program (usually more). For more information on practice experience and applying to the program please see our frequently asked questions page.